Bone by Bone

by Carol O'Connell

  Something about a fifteen-year-old boy had called out to the strange little man with the black toupee. That much would have registered with Josh, and it would have placed the whole subject beyond the confidence of his older brother. In those days, Oren had an ugly word for Josh’s stalking activities. Consequently, his little brother would never have mentioned any incident that involved Ferris Monty, the personification of creepy.

  Oren wished that he had been more understanding then. Understanding now broke his heart.

  Sarah Winston mimicked bright birdcalls as she filled the feeders all along the rail of the outside deck. A few steps away, her daughter adjusted a pair of binoculars to focus on the judge ’s old Mercedes as it turned into William Swahn’s driveway and disappeared behind thick trees.

  Isabelle circled around the deck for a better view, and the car was recaptured in her lenses when it reappeared in the small clearing in front of the house down on Paulson Lane. She anticipated Oren Hobbs, but it was Hannah who emerged from the driver’s side to help William up the steps to the front door. His limp was worse today.

  She wondered if he knew what they were saying about him on the news.

  Sarah Winston was ignorant of the latest rumors. Isabelle had not wanted to spoil a day of rare good spirits. Her mother seemed so happy in her whistled conversations with the birds flocking to the feeders.

  Leaning back against the rail, Isabelle watched wild things grow tame in the older woman’s presence. After passing a few minutes this way, she noticed that one of the stationary telescopes was aimed downward. She looked through the eyepiece. It was already focused to give the clear view of a window framing a desk and chair. This was no accident. Every tension screw had been tightened to fix the position and keep the lens from straying off target. She was startled when William appeared in the window.

  Which one of her parents was spying on him?

  TWENTY-TWO

  The door was open to the noise of preparation for a birthday party, hammering and hollering, swearing and sawing wood.

  Outside on the deck, a man in coveralls folded his ladder, having finished the chore of nailing strings of lights around the roof of the tower room.

  Inside, Addison Winston stood by the bed, looking down at the face of his unconscious wife. ‘It’s amazing that she could sleep through that racket.’ Though he should not call it sleep, this drunken stupor. He turned to Isabelle. ‘Well, now you know why she’s been so cheerful today.’ He got down on his knees to drag an empty bottle out from under the armoire. ‘Where is she getting it from?’

  ‘The maid?’

  He shook his head. ‘Hilda gives her one drink for breakfast and one for lunch. That girl knows better than to cross me.’

  The workman carried his ladder down the tower stairs, and Isabelle closed the door behind him. ‘Addison, it’s long past time to put Mom in rehab.’

  ‘Worst possible timing.’ The lawyer walked out onto the deck. In the yard below, the workmen were breaking for lunch. Ah, peace. He was no longer troubled by the cawing and flapping of birds. They had learned not to come near him.

  Isabelle joined him at the rail. ‘Why did you marry my mother? Was it because she was so beautiful?’

  ‘She’s still beautiful,’ he said, insistent on this. ‘But no, that wasn’t it. Back in your mother’s college days, do you remember how she supported you?’

  ‘I think she had lots of different jobs.’

  ‘Well, you were only four years old. Belle, she literally sang for your supper. Such brave songs – brave because your mother couldn’t sing very well. And she didn’t play that guitar worth a damn. The first time I ever saw her, I was a visiting lecturer at UCLA. She was standing barefoot on the grass, and you were curled up in a little ball, fast asleep in a patch of afternoon sun. Students were coming and going all around you.

  ‘The young can be very savage, but they never ridiculed Sarah – even though she played all the wrong chords and sang every damn note off-key. A truly awful performance, but the students dropped their loose change into her open guitar case. They weren’t pity donations – more like showing respect. Sarah was so daring, hanging herself out on public display – and she even knew that she didn’t have one shred of talent. I emptied my wallet into her guitar case, and that was the first time we said hello.’

  Addison leaned over the rail and pointed down at a long silver vehicle as it parked by the paddock near the old stable. ‘Keep your eye on that one.’

  The driver opened a door at the rear of the narrow trailer and lowered a plank. Led by a rope halter, a silver stallion emerged, tossing his head and shying at every loud sound around him as his handler guided him into the paddock and released him.

  ‘Remind you of anyone we used to know?’

  ‘He looks a lot like old Nickel.’ Isabelle picked up the binoculars for a closer look. ‘Exactly like Nickel.’ Her old horse had died the year after her mother had packed her off to a boarding school in Europe.

  More trucks arrived in the yard below to disgorge lumber, long tables and round ones, linens and folding chairs. The stallion ran round the paddock, mad to escape.

  ‘It took me a long time to find a horse with that same odd coloring,’ he said. ‘Call it a reward because you stayed for more than half a day this time. Your mother won’t need you for a while, but that poor beast down there could use some company.’

  The day he had bought her the first stallion, she had instantly fallen in love with the horse. And Addison had believed that ten-year-old Belle had finally come to love him, too – for a day.

  When she had flown down the tower stairs, leaving him alone on the deck, Addison resumed his puzzle of Sarah’s most recent stupor and her secret stash of booze. Where did she keep it? He had looked everywhere. And now he searched the lay of his land. The garage was far enough away that the start-up of automobiles would not disturb the lightest of sleepers. The expensive engines purred so softly in motion; they could covertly sail past the lodge and down the drive.

  Perhaps he should not be looking for secret bottles but a secret set of car keys.

  He turned back to the open door of the tower room and raised his eyes to the high shelf of journals – an excellent hiding place.

  Isabelle entered the stable’s tack room to find her old saddle waiting for her on a sawhorse. And the leather saddlebags were right where she had left them after her last time out with old Nickel. She filled both bags with her mother’s journals. Once upon another summer, they had been packed with her own birder logs and lunches for treks along the forest paths.

  Years ago, Oren Hobbs had hiked those same trails. Aided by one of her mother’s telescopes, she had caught glimpses of him from the deck at the top of the house. And she had risked encounters with that beautiful boy – risky because sometimes wishes came true, and, a time or two, she had thought of running him down with her horse and pounding him into the ground.

  Saddlebags slung over one shoulder and bridle in hand, she carried her saddle out to the paddock to make the acquaintance of the second Nickel. If birds would not come to her, horses had always liked her well enough, and this one trotted toward her with some urgency. The sight of the saddle must have given him hope that she would take him away from this place.

  ‘I know just how you feel.’ She held out one flat palm to offer him the solace of a sugar lump grabbed from the kitchen. His breath on her hand was a warm memory of better days.

  While Isabelle saddled the horse, intending to rescue them both for some quiet time in a calmer place, a yellow Rolls-Royce was heading toward her. Most visitors parked in the circular driveway at the front of the lodge. Ferris Monty had probably assumed that no one would be at home to him, and he was right. The car stopped by the paddock, and the driver waved to her. He stepped out, leaving the door hanging open, perchance to make a fast retreat. With all his money, she wondered why he did not buy a better hairpiece that would blend more gracefully with his thick gray eyebrows.

&nbs
p; ‘Hi there.’ He hesitated at a distance, lifting off the balls of his feet, saying on tiptoe, ‘I was hoping to have a word with your mother.’

  Isabelle, having nowhere to hide, resented being cornered this way, but she recalled a lesson in journalism learned at Addison’s knee: Always toss a bone to the dogs of the Fourth Estate. If you make them work for their supper, they’ll turn on you and eat you alive. And so, because her mother was too fragile to be chased down for an interview, Isabelle bestowed a smile on the worm-white little man. ‘Mom’s kind of busy right now.’ She gestured toward workmen on ladders, nailing up lights to frame every window. ‘It ’s quite a production. Will I do?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He rushed forward, grinning.

  And she took one step back.

  His cologne was repulsive, though she recognized the brand as a wildly expensive one. No doubt Monty had bought it for status only. Certainly he had never realized that personal body chemistry added something to the mix of every wearer. In his case, the blend of his natural odor worked an unfortunate effect: riding just below the signature scent was a faint smell of piss, as if he had recently wet himself.

  The little man pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his blazer, and his eyes slowly narrowed with a catlike smile. Later in the day, she would remember him with restrained claws and faint purring.

  ‘It ’s about the birthday ball,’ he said. ‘I was so looking forward to attending this year. Assuming I’m welcome. Your father was—’

  ‘Of course you’re welcome. Everyone in Coventry has an open invitation.’ She smiled, as if she had no idea that Monty was the only exception. Addison despised this man, and Isabelle ’s only joy in life was thwarting her father. ‘I’ll tell the caterer to seat you in the ballroom, unless you’d rather have an outside table.’ She borrowed his notebook and scribbled a personal invitation that would get him past a gorilla doorman hired for the event.

  ‘Oh, this is wonderful,’ he said, insanely pleased.

  While answering his interview questions, she slowly steered him back to his car, hoping to see him off before her mother awoke to appear on the deck. ‘Sorry,’ she said in response to his last inquiry. ‘I don’t remember the year Addison started building this place.’ She looked up, shading her eyes to see the high tower. ‘It seems like we ’ve always lived in the castle.’

  The mangling of this famous line of American gothic was not wasted on Monty. His eyes flickered, and his face brightened as he committed her words to paper, maybe embellishing on innuendo to create something worse than the truth about her family life.

  Fat chance.

  ‘As I recall,’ he said, ‘you left town a few days after Joshua Hobbs disappeared.’

  ‘Well, there was nothing odd about that.’ And now she thought of another lie. ‘It was time to go back to school. I had summer sessions that year.’ She neglected to mention that she had been sent farther away than her eastern boarding school. Her plane had landed in Paris, where she had learned to speak French and miss her mother.

  ‘But you never came back.’ His pen described small circles above the page of his notebook, a subtle prompt.

  ‘Oh, you mean for the summer. No, you’re right. This is my first summer back in Coventry. In my college years, I did internships during school vacations, and I picked up my graduate degrees in London. That’s where I work now. So my visits home were short ones, holidays mostly.’ And they had indeed been short stays, years apart and never lasting for an entire day.

  Isabelle and Ferris Monty smiled at each other, and there was no protest or insinuation. They had mutually and silently agreed that he would have to make do with this stew of truth and lies.

  ‘Oh, one more thing.’ He held up his index finger, as if to test the wind. ‘Shortly after you left, your mother also went away for a while.’

  And that would have been the time, recently recounted by Addison, when her mother had been committed to a hospital for wealthy people with eccentricities, patients who eccentrically acquired the angry red tattoos of razor scars on their wrists. On another occasion, her mother had downed sleeping pills like handfuls of candy.

  Bet you can’t eat just one, Mom.

  ‘My parents used to take separate vacations,’ said Isabelle.

  And so they had. Her father had gone off to the circus of his high-profile law practice down in LA, and her mother had gone insane.

  The red cedar house in the woods had the steeply pitched roof and filigree of a Swiss chalet. Oren Hobbs was sitting on the doorstep when Ferris Monty came home.

  The little man seemed resigned to his fate. His feet were dragging as he left his Rolls-Royce and crossed the yard to face his visitor. Without the exchange of a single word, the two of them entered the house.

  The dust and debris of the large front room was the giveaway of a long malaise, but Oren could chart the past few days of recovery by inroads made in the mess and by the garbage bags lined up at the door. These signs of a brighter mood would not square with the anxiety of a murderer whose crime had recently come to light with the bones. He sank down in an armchair, and Ferris Monty stood before him, eyes cast downward, like an aged schoolboy awaiting punishment.

  ‘I took a long look at those three pictures of you in the bank.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’ Monty slowly raised his eyes. ‘But tell me, what did you think of the other triptych?’ His smile was strained. ‘The photographs in the post office?’

  Oren’s voice was calm. His eyes were cold. ‘I noticed the way you were looking at my brother when he took those shots – the ones in the bank.’

  ‘But the postmaster’s pictures are miles more interesting. They give up a secret relationship. Your brother was very good at capturing secrets.’

  Oren nodded. ‘There’s a word for what you are.’

  ‘A phebophile,’ said Monty. ‘One who preys on adolescent boys. That’s the word you want. It doesn’t describe me. I’m hardly a virgin, but I can assure you that all of my lovers have been consenting adults. I never touched that boy. I’d never set myself up for that kind of rejection.’

  Monty removed his toupee to reveal sparse strands of gray on a wrinkled scalp. He seemed even less normal without the fake hair – more insectile. The sheriff had correctly likened him to bug larvae.

  The little man looked down at the black hairpiece in his hands. ‘A beautiful boy like that would run from the likes of me.’ His eyes wandered to Oren’s boots. ‘And your brother could run very fast. He needed speed . . . considering what he was doing, shadowing people, following them around for hours – days. I think that’s why he always wore sneakers. He imitated everything else about you, Mr Hobbs – your walk, the way you combed your hair, clothes – everything but your cowboy boots.’

  ‘You just admitted to stalking my brother.’

  ‘I always kept my distance.’ Monty backed away as Oren rose from the chair. ‘I can help you, Mr Hobbs.’ He tripped on one of his garbage bags and fell backward to land on his tailbone. ‘Today I led you into the post office.’ There was a trace of whimper in his voice. ‘I all but led you there by the hand and pointed out the pictures on the wall. I know you’ve seen them a hundred times . . . but today you actually studied them, didn’t you?’

  Oren moved toward him.

  By hands and feet, Monty scuttled backward, eyes wide and frightened as he dragged his rump across the rug, and backed up to the wall. ‘You saw the pictures of Swahn secretly passing a letter to the town lunatic.’ His eyes were begging now, hands rising to ward off anticipated violence.

  Seconds ticked by – half a minute.

  Oren was motionless, arms at his sides. He knew how to wait.

  Monty slowly lowered his hands. ‘You’re disgusted by the idea that I could love Joshua. But I think you’ll take my help. I know something about Swahn’s letter.’

  Sarah Winston hardly paid attention to her husband. Addison had become accustomed to her hundred-mile stare, and so it raised no interest i
n him when her gaze went over his head to the high bookshelf that ran around the wall of the tower room.

  A group of birder logs was missing.

  Which ones?

  Could Addison have taken them? No, her husband had nothing but contempt for this side of her life. Isabelle must have borrowed those Birdland chronicles.

  If he should look up and see that empty space on the shelf, he might wonder where the books had gone; and then he might take an interest and open the others. What then? Would he commit her to another hospital?

  He was talking in the lecture mode that followed her every binge. She nodded absently, lowering her gaze to meet his eyes. And now husband and wife were connected. She could still hold him this way. At core, Addison was a romantic man, blind to the changes of her aging and alcoholism. His smile was a constant thing, even in moments of anger, but she knew all of the subtle nuances.

  She wished he would stop it, drop it – yell if he liked – but stop smiling.

  Isabelle and Nickel Number Two had followed a well-worn trail past Evelyn Straub’s old cabin. After a while, it should have led her to a landmark in one of her mother’s journals, but she had been lulled by the slow rhythm of the horse and the warmth of the summer sun. Intoxicated by lush green forest and birdsong, trills that ran up and downhill – distracted by the novelty of happiness – she had overshot the clearing.

  She found another trail leading out of the woods and onto the fire road. Following a memory, she counted sharp twists and wide curves, and then she saw the turnout up ahead, the place where her mother had always left the car. As the horse clopped toward that old parking space, Isabelle passed another turnout closer to a favorite place in the forest, and there stood an empty van. In the dirt, there were signs of other vehicles recently stopping here.